Background and objectives
The European Federation of food, agriculture and tourism trade unions, EFFAT, is a single umbrella organisation serving trade unions throughout the food processing chain in Europe, “from field to fork”. Our 120 national member organisations bring together over 2.6 million union affiliates and represent workers in all branches of agriculture, in food processing and its allied industries, and in the hotel, restaurant, catering and tourism sector.
EFFAT is committed to promoting the rights of workers in food production, agriculture and tourism. Safe, high-quality jobs based on safe food, sustainable agriculture and sustainable tourism are key objectives of our work.
The agriculture sector and the food industry are changing as they need to respond to environment, human health and world sustainability challenges. Biological resources need to be better used, so there can be food for more people with less environmental and climate impact per unit produced, and renewable biological material enough to produce the replacement for what we currently get from fossil crude oil. New green technologies are keys to develop a stronger biobased food industry.
This major change is progressively having an impact on jobs and skills as we currently know them and does raise many questions for now and the future for trade unions and workers’ representatives in the food industry and the agriculture sector.
This project will help food and agriculture trade unions across Europe, including candidate countries, to:
· increase their knowledge in understanding what the bioeconomy means for their industry, sector, jobs and skills, and
· increase their capacity in responding to the change and being part of industry-relevant and sector-lead solutions.
The project will allow food and agriculture trade unions to have the necessary tools to contribute to EU policy making in particular in the field of the greening of the economy, job creation and job matching, quality of work, skills and decent work.
